Dogwood's Guide to Writing
Hey guys! Originally, I wrote this guide on another wiki, but I figured it would be good to teach people here too! These topics are relatively short and easy to digest, so let's jump right in! (wait, not so jump-right-in-y, quick note that any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated!) DESIGNING CHARACTERS My most important thought on characters is that You're not committing a crime by modeling a character after a person. This doesn't cheapen the character at all; you, as a writer, have observed an interesting aspect of someone, and thought it would make a good character. OH MY GOD YOU'VE JUST MODELED A CHARACTER AFTER SOMEONE REAL No. No. ''Using this example from a video I watched from Overly Sarcastic Productions, an animator sees people move and animates that. An artist finds references and draws from that, even studying, which is directly copying someone's art. A graphic artist sees light and dark and can simplify an image to just white and black. A painter sees the colors and shapes and simplifies it to a painting that still looks like the image. An actor observes the body language and tones of someone in a certain situation and emulates it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with understanding a human and then creating a character from that. Don't shy away from it. The only problem with this arises if you don't understand humans. But that can happen anyways, even if you build a character from scratch. Now what ''is a human like? It's hard to explain; I think I could spout out a whole lecture about humanity and you might not understand, but let's just go with this for now. Humans live by "Perception is Projection." This means that the view of the world from the eye of a human (perception) is nothing more than them projecting their past out onto the world. Everyone has had a different past, different experiences, and these all collect into who a person is. This concept of the past affecting a character is often made kinda bad. Sometimes a writer will make a character who has had a bad past and use it to excuse their character's bad actions. "Oh, he's killing everybody, but but but his momma abused him when he was a baby, empathize and pity this poor poor guy." No. ''Look at Queen Scarlet. Her mind has been messed up to the point that she ''might seem like a cliche villain, but her abuse of Peril is so, so realistic. She has built Peril to believe that she is the only one who loves her, even though we as the reader can tell that Scarlet most definitely does not love Peril. Not only that, but Scarlet can't see beyond herself. She thinks she deserves a "happy ending" like the DoD. Is this any excuse for Scarlet's behavior? Absolutely not. Is Scarlet a precious sweet little baby who just wants her happy ending? No. If you think that- all I got to say is well. Rethink your thinking. But does this make Scarlet more believable? Totally. AWARENESS To properly write, be aware of the character's personality and let that flow into the character's actions and words. Let's use the movie Up as an example (side note: Up is a great movie and you should watch it. It has a great plot, storytelling, and dialogue- super super awesome overall.) SPOILERS (but come on guys this movie came out eight years ago) Carl is taking Ellie's death not like "Ellie's gone," but "Ellie's still with me, just dead." When the people break Carl and Ellie's mailbox, Carl says "Get away from our mailbox!" (I've pulled up the whole movie's script btw, so those are his exact lines.) See? As for Carl's actions, take a look at how he reacted with the construction workers. The man who broke the mailbox tried to help and fix it, but Carl rejected his help and said "I don't want you to touch it!" and even hit the man. Many viewers can connect with Carl through his actions; how many times has someone screwed up that you just want them to stop trying to help, or vice versa? It also shows a lot about Carl- he's irritable enough to hurt a stranger, he cherishes Ellie so much that he hits a man over his and Ellie's mailbox, and he had reached a "You've done enough, don't do any more" stage. Look at how much we got out of two sentences Carl said and a few seconds of action. Look at how much volume this speaks about Carl. Use this as an example for yourself. If you don't know much about your character, take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Label one side "Internal" and the other "External" and list all the traits of your character. It might be hard if you're not much of a "character writer." Make up stuff if you need to until you have a well-rounded, believable character. What would count as "not knowing much about your character"? Do you know what the character likes to eat for breakfast? Do you know what color their hair is? How do they get along with their siblings? It doesn't matter whether this stuff affects the plot or not; get down as many details as you can for your character so you have a reference to look at later on. Your planned story is rarely ever your final story, so if anything at all you know about your character can be used in the ever-changing plot, use it. THE CONTRAST OF EMOTION The typical way to make a reader cry is to buttering up a character and then shipping them off to the chopping block. Look at all your examples (spoilers): Rue from the Hunger Games, Metias from Legend, and all classics involving dogs (Where the Red Pine Grows, Old Yeller, Shiloh, etc.) (end spoilers) Now the key to making a reader cry or feel sad is more basic than "butter up character then kill." It's to contrast the positivity and the negativity. It doesn't need to be sequential. Maybe your character is wandering through the wreckage of a disaster and spots the remains of a man huddling over three other figures- two small ones and one big one. What does this tell the reader? In those moments before death, the man was trying to protect his family. This is the glimmer of positivity serves to highlight the negativity and make the reader feel even more depressed. Conversely, let's say there's a character in a situation very dark and sad, yet they still make light of it not in a cliche way, but an inspiring way. This positivity outshines the negativity, and establishes the character as a ray of light, a symbol of hope. You can even use colors to explain this. Ever put neon against a dark background? Doesn't the neon look brighter? But if you put the neon against a white background, it doesn't show up well. Same goes for writing. "YOU" AND ANONYMOUS NARRATORS The second-person "You" is often used in situations where the reader is in the story. Frankly? Those stories suck. The right way to use you is to think of it differently. You is anonymous; it doesn't specify. Use that to your advantage when you want to use second person. Of course, this can be achieved in the other POVs, but I want to point out that second person does that too. In third person, you would simply write with "he", "she", and "the dragon" all the time rather than use names. In first person, you would write along without mentioning the narrator's name. In second person, it's the same as first, but adds a certain style that the other POVs can't emulate. Second person, like I said before, is very stylistic. For example, there's two stories on another wiki called Equinox and The Snake That Rattles which do an amazing job with second person. In these stories, the true narrator is using "I", but they're telling the story to a named character, the "you." In Equinox, the true narrator is retelling her and her brother's past to her brother; in The Snake That Rattles, the narrator is telling the "you" of his past because he wants to show how he was there all along. (By the way if you have the time, they're amazing stories you should totally read, and you only need basic knowledge of Warriors to understand them.) PUNCTUATION Let's first cover quotes and capitalization and punctuation. When you combine these three- hooo boy, it gets confusing. A usual quote goes like this: "There were dragons everywhere, setting the forest on fire, and I couldn't breathe through all the smoke," she said. A split quote would be like: "There were dragons everywhere, setting the forest on fire," she said, "and I couldn't breathe through all the smoke." OKAY so this whole thing of what to capitalize in these quote thingamajigs takes wayyyy too long to explain and it's hard to understand. It'd be a lot easier if I gave you examples. Your job is to observe them- it's not that hard, really. Take note of what parts are capitalized, what parts have commas or periods, etc. A) "I was scouting around," he said, "and I found this pin." B) "I was scouting around, and I found this pin." He held up the pin. "Isn't it pretty?" C) "I was looking around, and I spotted a yellow bird," he said. D) "I really like cookies," she said. "Oh, and cakes." E) "My job," she said, digging her claws into his scales and shaking him violently, "is to keep you safe. So at least try not to get into trouble." Moving on to punctuating not-dialogue quotes and parentheses. For example, (this is in parentheses and it's the end of the sentence so the period is inside.) "Same goes for quotation marks." (Or, "with commas," the comma is inside the quotation marks/parentheses.) Personally, I don't follow this rule unless it's for skool, but I really should get into the habit. But, unless it's dialogue, this does not apply to exclamation marks and question marks. It would just make no sense. Ex. Why did you say "I don't like cake"? If you put the question mark inside the parentheses, it would make the character who said "I don't like cake" ask "I don't like cake?". See, makes no sense. Category:Miscellaneous